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Metacode/AFP/PCL

First off all, hello folks! Sorry I've been scarce as of late, but per my last thread posted a couple of months ago, I was job searching for quite a while. Then had foot surgery. Now getting ready for my wedding next week. Me = No Life.

New job is quite, quite interesting. Will definitely tell you guys more about that later...

Anywho, I have a quick question. And by "quick" I mean either incredibly stupid, or incredibly loaded. Here we go --

So far my experience with printing has been very simple -- basic printer set up, send files to printer, PCL driver does the rest of the job, move right along. My knowledge hasn't gone far beyond that limit.

Well with the programs I'm presently learning at my new job, I'm seeing files produced for the purposes of printing that are in either metacode, PCL, or AFP format. This is greek to me. From what I understand so far, these format files can't be simply opened by someone for viewing or just sent normally to a printer, but rather this is formated in a sort of code certain kinds of printers can read. i.e. Xerox reads metacode, HP reads PCL, and so on.

So I've been googling around and picking up some on-the-surface lessons on this, but have yet to find exactly what I want to know.

I know this is a horribly worded question, but I confess I have no clue what I'm talking about! So can one of you guys help me wrap my mind around this stuff?